2014 Winter Games: The latest

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SOCHI, RUSSIA — A two-goal lead blown in the final four minutes. A long shot that clanged off the post of an empty net. Two perplexing penalties in overtime, setting up a golden goal for Canada.

The U.S. women’s hockey team has lost late in the last four Olympics, but never in such preposterously heartbreaking fashion as this 3-2 defeat on Thursday night.

While the Canadians received their fourth straight gold medals, the Americans were left blank-faced or crying at Bolshoy Ice Dome. Sixteen years after the first generation of U.S. players won the inaugural Olympic tournament, these Americans thought Canada’s Olympic mastery over them had finally waned.

Instead, they have four more years to think about how the Canadians manage to seize their sport’s biggest moment while the U.S. gets left holding silver.

“To let them come back in the gold-medal game at the Olympics is the worst feeling in the world,” said Kelli Stack, who nearly became an improbable hero with a long clearing attempt that hit the right post of an empty net late in regulation.

Stack actually knew she hadn’t scored when she flipped the puck down the ice in the waning seconds. From her vantage point, she could tell it was going to hit the post even before it did.

“If it would have been an inch to the right, it would have went in, and we would have won the gold medal,” said Stack, shaking her head. “When pucks don’t bounce your way, you’ve just got to know that it wasn’t meant to be.”

Everything seemed dramatically different in the first 56 minutes. With a 2-0 lead, U.S. goalie Jessie Vetter appeared to be eminently capable of shutting out Canada for the first time in Olympic history, and the small contingent of U.S. fans was bouncing in its seats.

What happened next is what U.S. captain Meghan Duggan calls “crazy mode” — those frantic final minutes of a hockey game.

Poulin’s tying goal was another bad break: Vetter attempted a poke-check after the puck came out from behind the net, but it somehow went straight to Canada’s soft-spoken Quebecois hero.

Neither team could understand the referees’ eagerness to call penalties in an Olympic overtime, which is already 4-on-4 hockey.

During 3-on-3 play, a bad U.S. line change gave a breakaway to Canada’s Hayley Wickenheiser. Hilary Knight swooped in from behind, and Wickenheiser tumbled to the ice.

The officials curiously called Knight for cross-checking instead of either awarding a penalty shot or allowing play to continue. Replays showed no significant contact between the two.

Poulin ended it 39 seconds later.

“You can’t take the sting away,” U.S. coach Katey Stone said. “You just have to tell them how proud you are of them and how much they mean to you and what a tremendous privilege and honor it was to be a part of it.”